New Year Honours farce

There’s no point even picking out individual examples to dissect. You can see for yourself which honours have been doled out to people who in no way deserve them and frankly should have been sacked for their incompetence.

The honours system was there to serve a particular purpose, to reward those whose selfless work was not rewarded with great pay and perks. Now it is just the establishment awarding gongs to their fellow chaps and gals simply for being part of the gang and because it’s their turn, while chucking in a few worthies they’ve never heard of on recommendation to maintain some veneer of respectability.

It’s now an expectation that if you manage to slide into a cushy, lavishly remunerated top rank role, make a name for yourself on the sports field while managing to secure acres of media coverage, or win a medal at the Olympics, a gong of some kind will follow. If you’re just an ordinary, selfless, community minded individual your only hope for an honour is to be noticed by the establishment or its lackeys – but then, people like this don’t give of themselves in the hope of reward or award.

To say the honours system is wholly devalued is an understatement. Like the Nobel prize, it has been hijacked by establishment hooligans and left burned out by the side of the road.

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4 Responses to “New Year Honours farce”

“The Cabinet Office announces that ‘there is also a CBE for Cherie Blair in recognition of her service to women’s issues and to charity in the UK and overseas’.

In 2005, she toured five Australian cities to speak on behalf of a children’s cancer charity and was paid 102,000 GBP for doing so. (Her PR man, Max Markson, received about 40,000 GBP.) In Melbourne, an £82-a-head dinner raised 81,270 GBP but only 6,690 GBP went to the charity. The charity eventually earned 99,800 GBP from the tour, less than Cherie Blair received. Three years later, she apologised for a typo in her memoirs which inadvertently overstated how much had been raised for the charity.”

Your post reminded of how upset I was when I found out Irena Sendler missed getting awarded a Nobel Peace prize in 2007. She heroically, cleverly, and at great risk to herself, rescued thousands of children from the Polish ghettos during WWII. She was pipped at the post by Al Gore, because he made a movie about climate change. Absolutely no comparison between them. Sadly, she passed away a year later.